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Correspondent recalls 42 years of church news, meetings and ‘birthday book’

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Joan Doria was working as a national advertising representative for the Standard-Speaker in 1962 when she was asked whether she’d like to take over the Beaver Meadows news column.

She figured she would try it for a little while.

“I ended up doing it for 42 years,” Doria said.

She left the advertising position in 1963 but juggled the news column with jobs she held at area restaurants and shops.

As a correspondent, she collected and compiled news items into a column that ran three times a week. People would drop news items off at her house, or call her when they wanted something published in the paper.

“At that time we had a lot of news from the churches,” she said. “I’d also put in news from the Girl Scouts and other groups, and put in birthdays and meetings.”

To compile the columns, she was paid $30 per month.

Doria never drove, and if she couldn’t make it to the office because of a transportation issue, she would ask someone to drop off the column for her.

And because she never wanted to miss publishing a resident’s birthday, she put together what she called a “birthday book.”

“I passed that on to the current correspondent, Annette (Rusnock),” Doria said.

— Jill Whalen

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